It’s nice when you can make something yourself, save a bit of cash, and end up with more creative photos as a result. That’s exactly what’s going on in the five-minute video below, demonstrating seven DIY light modifiers for creative portraiture.

Bill Lawson is a professional photographer and amateur tinkerer who enjoys sharing his fun photo techniques, some of which involve accessories he makes himself. In this five-minute tutorial, Lawson demonstrates a variety of DIY “gobos” for creating interesting shadows when shooting with off-camera flash.

If you’re unfamiliar with the terminology, a gobo (short for "go between") is simply a template or stencil that’s placed in front of a light source to manipulate how the illumination falls on an object. While these light modifiers can be used for a variety of purposes, in this video Lawson employs them to cast artistic shadows on a portrait subject.

Lawson’s DIY gobos include everything from lace fabric, a kitchen colander, and a cheap dish drainer, to one of those plastic scoops designed for cleaning a cat’s litter box. In other words, most of these “photo accessories” are things you already have at home.